Monday, October 24, 2016

Pols and Polls: The good, the bad, and the ugly

Summary for Oct 24. Clinton holds her lead with a 96% chance of winning. That taken into account, HuffPollster sees a 64% chance of Dems taking the Senate. Trump touts 3 polls favoring him, but ignores the 30 polls favoring Clinton. That's the "bad" for Trump. The "ugly" continues to be the majority of Trump supporters who will not accept a Clinton win as legitimate. Thanks GOP for undermining our republic.

Forecast update - The forecast has since shifted to a 34 percent chance of Republicans keeping the Senate and a 33 percent chance of Democrats taking the majority. Accounting for Clinton’s 96 percent chance of winning the presidency, that becomes a 64 percent chance of Democrats taking over. On the presidential side, Donald Trump has only a 3.9 percent chance of winning, with essentially no path to an Electoral College victory as long as Clinton maintains her leads in Florida, Pennsylvania, Colorado, Michigan and Wisconsin. [Senate forecast, Presidential forecast]

Trump leads in some polls, but those are likely outliers - HuffPollster: “The Donald Trump campaign is clinging to any shred of evidence it can find that shows the beleaguered GOP nominee in a competitive race with Hillary Clinton. Most polling and forecast evidence points to a sizable win for Democrats on Nov. 8. But there are a few national polls that team Trump can cherry-pick to claim a lead…. [T]he basics of polling error indicate that the polls showing Trump leading are likely “outliers,” either by statistical chance or by design. There are lots of opportunities for things to go wrong in polls. Survey experts generally point to five areas where things can go awry: sampling, coverage, nonresponse, measurement and post-survey…. Consistency in a large number of polls means they’re probably pretty close to reality. We have a whole lot of consistency in showing Clinton ahead nationally. Plus, national polls have a decent track record of being right in U.S. general elections…. Bad samples or other errors happen to even the best pollsters. When the Trump campaign or supporters try to leverage the three national polls that show him leading, keep in mind that more than 30 in October have shown Clinton ahead. The likelihood of that many polls being wrong is very low.” [HuffPost]

MOST TRUMP SUPPORTERS DON’T THINK CLINTON CAN WIN LEGITIMATELY - HuffPollster: “No matter which presidential candidate comes out ahead on Election Day, many Americans won’t be ready to accept the results… a new HuffPost/YouGov survey finds… Although Clinton is overwhelmingly the favorite to win, 42 percent of Americans who’d prefer to see her in the White House still say it’s possible that Trump could legitimately win in the election, compared to 36 percent who say he could win only if the election was rigged. Most of those favoring a Trump victory, however, see a legitimate Clinton win as an impossibility. Fifty-seven percent say she can win only in a rigged election, with just 30 percent believing she could win honestly. A 53 percent majority of Americans who’d rather see Clinton win the election say that if Trump wins, they will not accept him “as the legitimate president.” An even larger majority of those who’d prefer a Trump win ― 64 percent ― say that they wouldn’t accept Clinton as legitimate. [HuffPost]